Euro FT: Nuerburg

I'd never driven these cars before, and couldnt find a setup on Sam's HD I liked, so ended up gambling on an untested setup. Didnt work. Still, jumping from 10th to 2nd on lap one was fun. Completely lost concentration in the final chicane and wrecked hard, thank God there was only one corner to go and it didnt cost me anything!!!

After the race I went offline and tried one last setup and found that could do easy low 36s! Doh! Oh well, I guess I'll just have to come back and get a piece of Roman next time ;-)

I can't complain about this result at all! Had the 3rd fastest time in practice, then during qualifying i hit the tire wall in the chicane and lost the front wing. Off to the pits and no time for another flyer, so started 11th.

For the race I decided to be careful but firm, and at T1 I ended up 7th, don't ask me how but it happened!!! Made it up to 4th eventually and stayed there, having some great racing with Barrett, I had a feeling I was holding him up a bit but I wasn't just gonna give him my spot, he had to earn it :) Fortunately I made less mistakes than him and kept it in front . Then to my surprise, I was handed 3rd place when I saw a car going real slow at the exit of the chicane, yay for me!!! Then it was just a matter of making no mistakes and taking it easy, which was hard, Barrett was still right behind me.

Very surprised to see Scott have an accident at the last turns of the last lap, could've snagged 2nd but he kept it in line and kept his spot. Congrats to everybody for a nice event!!!

I'm such an idiot. Qualified second - my highest qual ever, and led into T1. Couldn't match Roman's pace and he went past me, but I still held second. Until I clipped the tyres at the chicane, undoing all that hard work.

I'm quite disappointed that I missed out on a podium but there's something rather funny about the whole thing.

'grats to Roman on the win, Scott and Zach for the podium after great runs thru the pack on the first lap.

a very enjoyable, yet disappointing, race from my seat.

I was more than a little surprised to find myself 3rd on the grid. got a decent start, but Scott got by me on lap 1 when i made my biggest mistake of the race. checking my mirrors, i missed the apex leading onto the back straight by a considerable amount. But Scott was a little unsteady in the corners and i almost got the position back on the next lap when he got loose under braking for T3. but he made an amazing recovery out of my view and was suddenly beside me again in T4.

in the meantime, Zach, had also made a nice run up to 4th (from 11th) on the first lap.

so i settled into 3rd and was just driving as consistently as i could, making only a few small line errors. and as the laps added up i felt pretty good about things as both gaps seemed to vary only according to how well i hit my marks.

[Zach, you may have confused me with Kory, who was 5th to your 4th thru this portion of the race.]

and so it was going really well -- until lap 8. still running 3rd, as i was going thru the chicane, the cable to my pedals came loose and i lost brakes and accelerator. i coasted into the grass near the outside of the last turn, shoved my monitor back, jammed the connector back in place and repositioned the monitor just as Zach went by.

guess it's good this didn't happen somewhere else on the track.

i closed a bit after that, but finished just over a second back of Zach in the end. great run Zach!

but if i let myself think about "what might have been" i look at the gap to Scott, who had the off i was hoping for on the final lap. turns out i lost about 5 seconds to my equipment problem and finished just under 2 seconds out of 2nd place.

Roman was taking a shower by then, of course.